Updating voting rights

Published: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 at 08:00 AM.

The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, reassured that the court is not declaring that racial discrimination has been eradicated. Rather, the court is telling Congress it should update its data more than every half-century, so that the Department of Justice must prove a jurisdiction requires preclearance based on what it is doing today, not what it did 40 or 50 years ago.

Nevertheless, critics seized the opportunity to wail about turning back the clock, repealing the VRA, ending civil rights, etc. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said, “The law is as necessary today as it was in the era of Jim Crow laws.”

Really? Has so little changed since 1965?

President Obama issued a more temperate statement. Although he said he was “deeply disappointed” with the court’s decision, he still noted, “As a nation, we’ve made a great deal of progress toward guaranteeing every American the right to vote.”

Indeed. So let’s update Section 4 formula to reflect those changes. If the new data indicates someplace hasn’t made sufficient progress, then the Section 5 preclearance remedy remains in effect. If fewer jurisdictions qualify, that is evidence of the VRA’s success and should be celebrated, not ignored in favor of retaining an outdated — and unconstitutional — status quo.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday told Congress to join the 21st century on civil rights.

Overheated critics of the court’s ruling compared it to reinstituting Jim Crow. They are the ones, though, who are living in the past.

In a 5-4 decision, the court struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on the grounds that Congress had not updated the criteria for enforcing it in some 40 years.

Before 1965, African-Americans in the South faced obstacles to voting, such as poll taxes, literacy tests and other government-sanctioned policies designed to keep them from registering. They also faced intimidation and violence if they tried to vote. Congress in 1965 passed the Voting Rights Act, which forbids literacy tests and required federal oversight of elections.

Section 4 of the VRA laid out a formula describing which sections of the country fell under the law, i.e., those areas, from counties to entire states, that were violating minority voting rights (although it covered much of the South, it also applied to some areas north of the Mason-Dixon Line, such as those with Hispanic or Indian populations). Section 5 required those covered jurisdictions to submit to “preclearance,” which meant that any changes these covered jurisdictions made to their local elections had to be approved first by the federal government.

Thus, Section 4 triggers Section 5, and it proved to be highly effective. Jim Crow has been moldering in his grave for generations.

A majority of the court, though, found fault with how Section 4 is applied today: Congress has been periodically reauthorizing the VRA (most recently in 2006) with data on voter turnout that was last compiled in 1972, ignoring the changes in policies and attitudes in jurisdictions that have occurred since then.
It’s like holding a teen-ager of today responsible for something his grandfather did decades ago, based on the theory that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, reassured that the court is not declaring that racial discrimination has been eradicated. Rather, the court is telling Congress it should update its data more than every half-century, so that the Department of Justice must prove a jurisdiction requires preclearance based on what it is doing today, not what it did 40 or 50 years ago.

Nevertheless, critics seized the opportunity to wail about turning back the clock, repealing the VRA, ending civil rights, etc. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said, “The law is as necessary today as it was in the era of Jim Crow laws.”

Really? Has so little changed since 1965?

President Obama issued a more temperate statement. Although he said he was “deeply disappointed” with the court’s decision, he still noted, “As a nation, we’ve made a great deal of progress toward guaranteeing every American the right to vote.”

Indeed. So let’s update Section 4 formula to reflect those changes. If the new data indicates someplace hasn’t made sufficient progress, then the Section 5 preclearance remedy remains in effect. If fewer jurisdictions qualify, that is evidence of the VRA’s success and should be celebrated, not ignored in favor of retaining an outdated — and unconstitutional — status quo.

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